Q&A - On Demand Streaming

[Figured maybe it's time to do something useful on this blog, so I'm going to start posting some of the questions I'm asked - perhaps the answers will be useful to more than the asker. We'll see.]

Hey Tim, What type of application would you suggest to stream video on a website without install any ActiveX controls and does not use windows media, real media, quicktime and such. I would like to have a video streamed quickly on a webpage and without any hindrances of people's PC's. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about.if I confused you, just let me know.

The best way - and really the most popular way right now - to do on demand streaming (on demand as in pre-recorded, not live) is to use flash. Swish (less expensive than macromedia's flash creation programs) sells a video to flash conversion program, I would assume any full fledged flash editor could be set up to do the same.

I've haven't work to much in this area yet, so I can't really recommend an process or application. I do have a project that is heading this direction - once that happens I'll probably convert the WhatStandard site to use flash.

It may also be good to provide a download link (MPEG is a good choice there) for people who don't have flash. My guess would be that most of the 'flashless' among us actively chose to be that way - considering that flash is bundled with browsers and easily installed. That type of person would know what to do with a download link, and would know how to play a MPEG file. I think it's also likely that they wouldn't have real, quicktime, or windows media installed - that's why I suggest an alternate MPEG download.

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